[Music] Ginga Au densetsu known in English as the legend of the galactic heroes is an animated home video series which holds a reputation as one of anime's most ambitious and impressive storytelling Endeavors based on the aonomus 10 volume novel series written by Tanaka Yoshi kisan and published over the course of 5 years starting in 1982 the first anime adaptation produced by Kitty film was released through home video across every couple of years from 1988 to 1997 in the end totaling 110 episodes that is before including the 50 plus episodes of Side Stories which were also adapted by the end of the 9s and the trio of films expanding on parts of the story which also dropped along the way with consistently High review scores and regular placement in top spots on sites which rank anime by aggregated user ratings Ginga AUD densetsu or Gina for short is a contender to the throne of being considered the outright greatest anime of all time and in this video I'm going to explain why it deserves that consideration I am Trixie the golden witch you can find my writing on Golden witch. substack doccom and this is another part of my series of in-depth retrospectives about anime Classics anime alphabet in spite of its Sterling reputation guina has never been one of the most popular Japanese animated shows though it has continued growing in worldwide Acclaim through word of mouth and increasing availability over the decades each episode of guina was released on VHS week by week via a subscription service in 26 to 37 episode bursts across every couple of years and it was then compiled into still very massive collections it would have been fairly expensive to engage with it in its original release and Word of Mouth about the series didn't reach Western audiences enough for any attempts at official localization to take off until the late 2010s when Sentai filmworks finally made the series available for streaming on their high dive platform to viewers in the US complete fan Subs of the series in English have been online since 2005 and with most illegal streaming sites housing as much anime as they can possibly get their hands on the availability of the series to curious English-speaking fans had first exploded in the late 2000s leading quickly to its overtaking of the top ranked spots on sites like Annie DB and my anime list and eventually developing a reputation just by sitting in such a visible position on those lists K has struggled to reach the higher echelons of popularity in enjoyed by so many of the other most beloved anime of its time thanks to its reputation as being somewhat daunting with over a 100 episodes and hundreds of named characters introduced therein the show is powerfully dense with narrative and is an epic military and social political drama set across the vastness of space its characters while handsome are realistically stylized and there aren't a whole lot of women or young people in the cast the dialogue is extremely formal with most of the interactions taking place between active military personnel and the show Show's extremely Frank and cynical portrayal of the horrors of War can weigh heavy on the mind and Heart It Is by some descriptions depressing and by some boring however the story is nonetheless extremely compelling for the majority of its runtime and without getting into any spoilers I will explain some of the storytelling mechanics which allowed someone like me that mostly watches shows about cute girls drinking tea or getting naked and beating the [ __ ] out of each other to understand and appreciate what's going on in this bleakly dramatic space War when I started up the first episode of guina for the the first time almost 13 years ago I immediately remember being overwhelmed by the introduction of four similar-looking frumpy middle-aged military dudes with complicated German names getting introduced along with rank at the very beginning especially since I had no idea what any of those ranks meant however the scene that follows involves these four men coming to argue strategy against the person currently in command the beautiful blonde wonderkind who most of this story is going to be about Reinhard Von lram everything I really need to know about any of these characters is established in this interaction all of their mindsets towards one another and ideas about the best ways to approach the battle they're about to start are laid out but more importantly Reinhardt spends this whole conversation shouting down all these old men and telling them to stop questioning his orders actually understanding the system of rank wouldn't make the power dynamics between these characters nearly as clear as both what the visual staging of the scene and the dialogue accomplish Gina will throw a lot of stuff at you sometimes but it will usually catch you up to speed pretty quickly and any anything that's important to know is going to be repeated several times by different characters or re-explained when it becomes relevant again just in the first two episodes which start off in the middle of a particular battle between the space spanning superpowers of the free planets Alliance and the Galactic Empire we meet a considerable number of characters and have a lot of foundational World building established but the biggest focus of these episodes is introducing us to the two most important characters in the show yangwen Lee working for the free planets Alliance and Reinhard Von Len gram working for the Empire most of that characterization comes by way of the focus which everyone else places on them over the course of the episode we immediately know that Reinhard and his right-hand man kir are more important to the story than the four old generals not only because of their more Distinctive Designs but also because all of those men's dialogue centers around reinhardt's actions the more Reinhardt is built up as a badass both by the men on his ship and by the fpa's only San man Yang W Lee the more impressive it is in kind that Reinhard has taken notice of yang the reason for that notice becomes clear as their tactical battle ensues as does what I would consider the framework of guin's first Arc I don't think it has an official name but I like to think of the first 26 episodes as The Changing of the Guard Arc most of its stories show us the incompetence and arrogance of the people in prominent positions on both sides of the conflict which get them killed when hyper talented newcomers start rising up the ranks and posing a threat to the stability of the conflict the first episode's most bitter story is that of Yang's good friend Jean Robert lap whom Yang regards as is essentially equal to himself as a reasonable mind amid the ineptitude of the FPA military considering how important Yang will quickly become to said military it's insane to think what could have been had Jean not lost his life thanks to his commanding officer's refusal to listen to his advice right in the first episode Yang on the other hand only loses his Commander promoting him to the position to start making the Tactical decisions which will allow him to subvert a total Victory on the part of the Empire Yang's ability to make great tactical decisions comes from his Instinct in predicting his enemy tactics because Reinhardt is a perfect Warrior and yang knows his own military's obvious weaknesses he can predict what Reinhardt is going to exploit and try to prevent him from being able to exploit it fully we see this working when reinhard's plan to drill through the center of the alliance forces is perverted by Yang predicting it and commanding the fleet to split and encircle the enemy instead forcing the enemy to continue out of the encirclement setting up Yang versus Reinhardt as the Rivalry compelling the series from its core right from the beginning was an excellent move and grounds the first Arc in our desire to see them overcome the problems each of them faces within their own team until they're powerful enough to face one another on their own terms these first two episodes immediately and spectacularly display the scale of guin's conflict by way of gargantuan Fleet illustrations painstakingly composed to fit as many battleships into each frame of Animation as possible while retaining formation that particular saturation of detail is crucial to guin's Magic everything is so thoroughly thought through that the story is able to fulfilling reflect on human nature through the perspective of history and to present the EB and Flow of war in Civilization with many conflicts and battles based on real historical events Guin proposes a future which it suggests to be inevitable on the basis of what has come before you will notice that even though guina is a science fiction series spanning an entire galaxy in scope it does not contain any presence or discovery of extraterrestrial life futuristic technologies that make its premise possible include artificial gravity and faster than light travel here made possible through the discovery of Subspace basically you can generate a distortion in space time time to pass an object instantly across hundreds of light years through Subspace a discovery which allowed Humanity to colonize as much as they could of the entire 100,000 light years of the Milky Way galaxy hundreds of years into our future and hundreds before the start of guin's story a history lesson Bridging the history from our time to that of the story is given in brief across the prologue chapter of the first book and adapted later in the anime as a historical documentary being viewed by one of the characters this is appropriate given that the prologue is written in the exact same way whereas the show in its entire is written like a dramatic retelling of a real period in human history with a narrator not only helping us to keep track of our place in the story sometimes summarizing the ramifications which have rippled out over the Galaxy as a result of the story's events but also commenting sometimes about the opinions of historians who have studied this period after it passed it isn't so much a historical record since we witness events in real time and get to hear the character's thoughts which they never transcribed anywhere but we are nonetheless to consider that all of the events on screen factually transpired in the history on which the narrator is reflecting in his summary of the story specifically Guin is the legend of the largest military conflict in human history it transpires over the largest imaginable distance of human occupation within a time period that it's reasonable for people of our time to even consider imagining and at the largest scale which is physically possible inside of that space What guin's history led to was the existence of two galactic superpowers defined by the shape of the Galaxy itself in order to maintain supply lines Starships usually need to remain within relatively short distance of occupied planets and Supply stations that are on their side however there is one part of space that's extremely difficult to get from one side to the other of except by way of two spatial corridors one of which has only a single inhabited planet in the middle of it to make travel possible and the other which was artificially made traversible when the Galactic Empire stuck a moon-sized fortress in the middle of it when they eventually had to deal with the emergence of a competitive nation state in the form of the free planets Alliance formed by those who fled the Empire and its fledgling State and eventually colonized the other side of the Galaxy in between the two galactic Powers sits the planet feeson which is nominally controlled by the Galactic Empire but has been allowed to self-govern so that they can have a trade relationship with the free planets Alliance as well and essentially act as a backend for both sides as attempts to have dealings with one another as such Faison's existence is made possible by the continued state of conflict between the superpowers and his flexibility in dealing with them is extremely lucrative to the people in charge of the place so they try to keep that conflict going by stoking the fires on both sides wherever they can get away with it meanwhile the isone corridor wherein resides the Empire's isone Fortress is where the bulk of the fighting has taken place across the 150 years of this War's ongoing stalemate every attempt the free planets Alliance has made to take the Fortress has failed thanks to its massive Laser cannon called Thor's hammer and the Empire would lose too much just trying to Ram all the way through Alliance territory so both sides continue staging feudal operations largely for the sake of justifying the existence of their own political structures at the behest of the people who want to stay in charge of them something had to give eventually and when the insurmountable Genius of Reinhard Von Len gram starts charging up the ranks of the galactic Empire's military and yang wendley in kind has to be driven to deal with him the conflict becomes deadly enough to begin a cultural upheaval that can finally break the stalemate in the bloodiest fashion that Humanity might ever be able to see watching these First episodes I thought it was funny at first that Fleet battles among spaceships essentially amount to three-dimensional versions of Fleet battles among regular ships but it makes sense that when you get to the point in mass production where you've literally saturated space with shifts and with all of them designed to be as fast and as deadly as possible designed aerodynamically and with directionally controlled laser cannons it does kind of feel like this is inevitably what space combat would have to look like it's not too dissimilar from the way that space combat is portrayed in director ishiguro noberu San's previous and equally seminal work superdimensional Fortress macros although instead of featuring transforming Mecca called Valkyries to perform the smaller aerial battle functions it features well basically transforming Mecca called V that seem a little more downto earth compared to anime's usual fantasies whereas mcross was aiming to be a love story on the backdrop of great battles Guin is a story of great battles on the backdrop of Greater battles there is clearly some level of fantasy to guin's story as it imagines hundreds of years of Humanity's unpredictable future by supposing yet unproven scientific Concepts to be discovered but it tries its damnest not to overstate the impressiveness of Humanity's Ingenuity there is medical prosthetic technology self-driving Vehicles terraforming and other stuff which is already either becoming possible or easy to predict is coming but that's pretty much it most of the stuff that Humanity has perfected is that which is used to wage war my favorite new discovery is the nion detectable and highly explosive Zephyr particle so often released on the battlefields that ground combat has returned to hand to hand with Warriors preferring axes in order to chop through the armored space suits that they fight in honestly I'm willing to accept the extreme number of insane axe deaths as a fair trade for the lack of Gundams in this show as a concession to the rule of cool still it's the meticulous attention to historically influenced romanticized realism which makes Guin so noteworthy and you'll find it in every Avenue of the show's design most notable to me as first pointed out by fellow anime YouTuber bakar raptor is that none of the characters has hair in front of their eyes or ridiculous hairstyles because they're all dressed to military protocol I've always found it strange and unfortunate how the anime adaptation of Titania based on a novel series from the same author as G and directed Once More by is shuro noan opted for designs which made it much harder to take that story seriously with the immediacy that I did Gina it actually gets pretty funny sometimes when you go from an epic sci-fi battle set to Soaring classical compositions straight into a completely normal looking office full of guys in suits having conversations or seeing characters sit around at home getting their news from the television but that's just how much guina remains grounded to the present to keep its story from getting too Fantastical given its accurate perspective on human history as an endlessly repetitive cycle of political upheaval and War it is interested Less in imagining a future that transcends the past and More in imagining a future that follows from it logically in the most predictable way that can still be simplified down into a compelling story over the course of what for the scale of what it's attempting to imagine is actually a pretty small amount of time there is so much tiny detail packed into making this future feel tangible and its characters and their conflicts believable so that it really feels like history in the making you'll gradually notice things like how the guys in the FPA are always drinking tea and spiking it with Brandy while the Empire's Admirals really like scotch or Downing glasses of champagne and slamming them on the ground that's going way beyond the obvious stuff you'll notice immediately like how the FPA is founded in Western Democratic politics and socially resembles a miasma of the USA UK and modern Japan whereas the Empire has been founded on iconography not to similar to World War II AIS powers and an Elite Class pulled out of revolutionary era France that worships Nordic gods FPA cities are bricked with unfathomably massive skyscraper blocks and people mostly live in austere metallic Apartments whereas commoners of the Empire mostly live on farms and are kept to simple lives while the elites eat through their taxes to live like pompous [ __ ] even more interesting are the ways the superpowers resemble one another most of their technology is practically identical as well as the tactics available to them in combat their militaries have similar cultures of viewing battle and death as glorious both governments are Rife with corruption and have tossed away countless lives to their careless commands in neither culture is the study of history given given great importance and so Yang's unique understanding of it is one of the biggest advantages he has in being able to tell what's going on in the complicated political landscape surrounding him the third episode shows us the depth of the corruption in Yang society when he returns to his home planet of heinesen to hang out with his adoptive son Julien and his military buddy Dusty Attenborough he is upset to see the fpa's Secretary of Defense job trunet who never appears on the front lines of battle giving a speech to glorify those who gave their lives in the name of stoking the fires of warri even further Jessica Edwards the wife of Jean Robert lap whom we saw dying with her picture in hand in the first episode arrives at the ceremony to ask job where he was when her husband was giving his life for democracy literally quoting bring your own Bomb by System of a Down Jessica is removed from the premises and then attacked in the streets by a gang of zealous nationalist terrorists until Yang shows up to rescue her and bring her home this leads to a tactical battle between Yang's friends and the Patriotic night Corp until Yang who is acutely aware of job tr's personal involvement with the pkc calls on him directly to ensure Jessica's safety or else incur his wrath afterward as a result of his prowess during the opening battle Yang is also given a promotion to the rank of rear Admiral and command of a small Misfit Fleet with which he is expected to produce a miracle by unexpectedly taking isone Fortress episode 4 then explores the corruption in the Empire through showing the backstory of Reinhardt and kir I's childhoods coming from a broke Noble family Reinhardt enjoyed a humble middle class upbringing as the nextdoor neighbor of Kiri meeting reinhard's sister for the first time kiris is instantly infatuated with her and anarose seeing the slightly older and larger boy asks him to take care of her younger brother unwittingly defining the trajectory of the rest of that boy's life as reinhardt's second half we are shown how Reinhardt is not in need of protection in the literal sense since he is more than willing to end any conflict that bullies try to start with him by way of immediate retaliation rather kirce has to keep Reinhard from going too far and losing his Humanity in a psychopathic rage reinhard's mentality only gets worse when the sleazy Kaiser in charge of the Galactic Empire happens to see his older sister on the street one day and decides to take her as a concubine his father sells out his own daughter to the Kaiser for the sake of status and anarose accepts her Fate on the premise that Reinhard will have a better future really they've all put the future into the hands of the unimaginable Rage of a young genius who almost goes too far and gets himself in trouble trying to take immediate violent retribution on the Nobles that took his sister away before escaping with kiris and making a vow to to accumulate not only enough power to get his sister back but also to ensure that no one could ever take anything from him again kir ice agrees to follow him in this ambition and we have already seen the progress that each of them made by only age 20 at the beginning of the show it won't be long before we see rinard give a similar speech again this time outright declaring his intention to seize the entire galaxy with that pack of introductory episodes the stage has been set for the chess game of the universe to play out which was actually the original name of the first novel before it was published it's not a meme to say that the entire show is a game of 3D chess besides the fact that the characters are shown literally playing 3D chess in Universe multiple times the whole thing plays out move by move but we get a lot more context into what those moves actually look like beyond the abstraction of a game board by way of all that established World building and character motivation after all these pieces have a will of their own and if Reinhard and yang really had just been players sitting at a table against one another the battle wouldn't have been nearly as long or told us really nearly as much about The Human Condition instead Reinhardt and yang are also pieces on the board and none of the pieces is assigned permanently to any particular side it is appropriate that Adrien rubinsky the landlord of fezen and Lex Luther type of the guina universe is not talked about by other characters or involved in as many dramas as Yang or Reinhardt is his manipulations often tip the balance of the conflict so that it continues on even at points when a power imbalance could have allowed one side to push to Victory rubinsky is a shadowy figure lurking behind the scenes always scheming away to keep living like a Kingpin and staying relevant to history even if only a few people really know his role in it gin strikes an excellent balance in how it Paces its characterization with some characters undergoing arcs across the first season others being established just enough to catch our attention and hoping to see them fleshed out more in later seasons and some whose stories are told in just one or two episodes or who are killed off before the season is over some characters sort of come and go without really becoming likable or all that memor but serve important functions in operating the scale of the story if I watched this show a few times I would probably start paying more attention to minor bit characters whose stories didn't last as long as the guys that end up sticking around to the end but who still did something interesting while they were around that made something else that was cool possible some of the most interesting episodes in the first season come as a result of cutting go to new characters that will only be around for an episode or two just to show us the ground level effects of broadly sweeping tactical commands given by Reinhard in this regard the first season is perhaps the most chotic after all the number of living souls in the universe is only going to be reduced in massive chunks continually as the show presses on while later Seasons buckle down to get more involved in the intricacies of the conflict between now better established characters whom we really care about and want to see how long they can survive this Bleak setting Reinhard Von Len Grom makes the most sense to consider the protagonist of guina because his ambition to seize the universe is the driving force behind all of the change that ripples out through the story setting yangwen Lee might be even more important to the heart and soul of the story however as he is painted as its moral Center by his complete lack of desire to fight distaste for war and absolute belief in upholding democracy Yang is always put into a reactive position because his only personal Ambitions are to get to retirement as quickly as possible and continue studying history having grown up poor and lost both of his parents early Yang joined the military because it was the only clear way towards any kind of livelihood and because the military offered the only free ride to college which would allow him to study history ironically the history program would be cut after just his first 2 years in school so he ended up studying tactics for the next 2 years instead and thus he became the only person in the entire FPA with a firm understanding of the relationship between those two subjects and how they should be definitional in the approach one takes to actually winning a war it's hard to blame Yang for not wanting to push himself fighting for a government as corrupt and awful as the free planets Alliance has become by the start of the story in spite of the military having practically swallowed the entire culture of the FPA it is run incompetently at the beh of politicians who can't imagine another solution to their crumbling economy and increasing debt to Pheasant other than continuing to try and beat back the Empire at the very least any minor victories that they can rack up in this effort tend to Spur the populace into jingoistic war support and allow the politicians who encouraged those War efforts to keep their positions Yang doesn't want to play ball with those kinds of people but his ability to save the military from Total humiliation time and again with his tactical Acumen makes him very popular with those kinds of people and so he is pushed into the role again and again in spite of his own Pro protests and desire for other Solutions all of this is witnessed by the people directly surrounding him who grow to share his indignation and exasperation with the ways of the state and also to understand his Viewpoint that leads him to his own decision-making his adoptive son Julian is heavily inspired by Yang and wants to follow in his footsteps by joining the military but also offers a somewhat harsher and less nuanced perspective which Yang often hopes to course correct through his lectures freder greenh Hill is assigned to Yang's Fleet as his second in command essentially as a way of keeping tabs on him as she is the daughter of his boss and known for her Perfect Memory she has a very positive opinion of Yang anyways from having been helped by him in the past and continues following in his footsteps going forward Dusty atenor is one of Yang's wise cracking friends who knows how bad things are and isn't trying to be quite as crushed about it as Yang is one of the great parts of guina is how in between the uptight coordinated military discussions and climactic scenes of noble people totally losing their [ __ ] before getting killed there are also quiet scenes of smart people having quippy conversations reflecting on the events of the story story and what they have to say about human nature if you've ever seen memes from this show a lot of them comes from those pvy conversations such as the most famous one where Yang explains that he drinks alcohol because alcohol has been a friend to humanity for thousands of years and he cannot abandon a friend Walter Von sheno is introduced clowning on some of douchebag's Secretary of Defense job trunet friends and therefore instantly earns Yang Wiley's respect before we find out that he's the captain of the Rosen Ritter a group of badass foot soldiers that defected from the Empire to become the alliance's deadliest fighting force thanks to Shem cop's drawing suspicion from other people in the military and Yang's confidence that they will find trust in one another he ends up becoming a part of Yang's Fleet and one of his closest Associates Jessica Edwards the wife of Yang's deceased best friend who also had feelings for Yang before she ended up with Jean ends up getting further and further involved in politics first leading a protest movement and then a political party and eventually even getting elected to office though everything she does is constantly jeopardized and surrounded with violence thanks to its opposition to the political structure of the alliance and the extreme pull that job trun has in mobilizing Fanatics to silence his opposition on the Imperial side kiris is fleshed out Beyond his role as reinhard's right-hand man to become a representative of his conscience especially when he becomes pitted against the second most powerful voice influencing reinhardt's decision-making Paul Von oberstein these two are like the angel and devil on reinhardt's shoulders compelling him through the ark that he will overtake over the first season kiris is established through his own mission in episode 5 as the alax's kindest Admiral whose tactic is to swiftly overwhelm and disarm his opponents and then just offer surrender if he doesn't have to he would prefer not to kill anyone at all and will always choose the tactic most capable of protecting life first oberstein meanwhile is only concerned with Effectiveness if the path to Glory can be most quickly tread through a wall of human flesh then he would tear through it without question in this way he is even more ruthless than Reinhard by nature and naturally finds himself experiencing friction with the good-natured kiris being that reinhard's true specialty may very well be his skill in acre military talent to his side we are introduced to a lot of strong Admirals under his command over the course of the story the two that get the most Focus From the Start are the good friends Oscar Von ryanth and Wolf Gang mitm who exist at first primarily to have py and fun conversations about the goings on in the story from the perspective of working directly under Reinhard as they continue to establish themselves as reinhard's most capable Admirals they will only grow in importance and rack up their own slew of noteworthy accomplishments over the course of the series and are already noticeably characters within the span of the first Arc later into the ark we will also meet my favorite woman in the guina universe H deard Von mariendorf who is as Adept as Yang is at surveying the complications of her culture and seeing how Reinhardt is going to rise through all that crap and reset the state of the Galaxy but she's looking at it from inside the Empire as the daughter of a noble and has the chance to tell Reinhard to his face just how sure she is of how his Ambitions will play out entertaining him to the point of deciding to consult with her from then on while I'm talking about each of the main characters individually I'd also like to point out some of the Stellar Voice work that brings this show to life Guin is a playground for Gruff old male voices of course but it gets to explore a lot of nuance in that range by giving such particular roles to such interesting voice Talent wakamoto noroan has long been one of my favorite Japanese voice actors best known for his over-the-top comedic and villainous roles in more recent decades but fans of Guin will know that he can also be a subtle and simmering sober kind of strange from his performance of Oscar Von Royal shiozawa Kanan toan's chillingly Hollow performance of Paul Von oberstein is so critical to the feel of the character that I couldn't imagine him with another voice at all Tomy yamakan plays Admiral Yang like a young dad whose voice has just started making him suddenly feel much older than his tender 33 years before he's ready I'm just scratching the surface of all the great acting in this show but these were some of my favorite performances that really defined its feel to me there are plenty of other interesting characters introduced in this Arc but I am by no means trying to make a definitive commentary on everything great about guina with this video we will get into a marked spoiler section of eventually so I can talk about some of the later character arcs and the themes that are explored by the story's later twist and turns but my foremost Purpose with this video is to strongly recommend that you take the time to experience this series and to have it in your life like any other classic show that I know is worth returning to and continuing to discuss I have every expectation that I'll end up wanting to watch this show again in the future and to be able to continue thinking about it and presenting those thoughts for the sake of discussion there is no way that less is deserving to be said about Guin than continues to be said about Neon Genesis Evangelion Cowboy bbop or Dragon Ball Z as other Classics of its era Gina's impact on storytelling in Japanese fiction isn't so easy to trace but there are shades of its execution in political sci-fi stories featuring tactical battles like the more popular code gas and the not so popular short series Starship operators I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the story had also been an inspiration for berserk author mea canosan as he has cited science fiction light novels such as the long runningen Saga as an influence as well and the court scenes from berserk as well as aspect of Griffith's personality bu a striking resemblance to similar scenes from Guin and the personality of Reinhard though the setting and story of Berserk are vastly more romanticized for a fantasy context Wikipedia tells me that Guin apparently has been said to have had a massive influence on Chinese online literature but it doesn't elaborate and I have no more information about it aside from adaptations of Yoshi Tanaka's other work in the form of his military fantasy epic the heroic Legend of arsin which had an incomplete but absolutely gorgeous OVA adaptation in the 9s and then a mang adaptation by Full Metal Alchemist author arakawa husan which later got its own longer TV anime adaptation in the 2010s as well as the aforementioned Titania which Bears a stronger resemblance to guina that unfortunately makes comparison to it unfavorable I think the story with the most thematic and presentational similarity to guina is probably Mobile Suit Gundam they're both about how war is hell and everyone is likely to die horribly thanks to their Sid's corrupt intent told from a historically recollective perspective but Gundam is a lot Messier and more Fantastical about it while guina tries to play things with as straight a face as it possibly can crest of the stars is another more quietly conversational science fiction novel adaptation with a lot more focus on the two main characters in their relationship as the driving force of its narrative but it still makes a sensical followup for straight-faced space politics if you don't want it so straight-faced irresponsible Captain Tyler is a Sci-Fi novel series adaptation with a much sillier protagonist that doesn't take itself so seriously I also have to recommend superdimensional Fortress macros which is the most committed to just being a compelling and entertaining drama out of all of these space War epics bear in mind though that there is absolutely nothing quite like the experience of the legend of the galactic heroes and when I say absolutely nothing I am even including the more recent anime adaptation which has been undertaken by production IG called the new thesis starting with a 12 episode TV anime which was recut into four short movies which is the format that the series has gone forward with since the new thesis plays to design Trends and uses animation techniques which sa the Timeless feeling from the presentation everyone looks like a pretty anime boy even more so than before with hair in front of their eyes and much simpler detail while the CGI doesn't look terrible it dates the series more than the style of the original did and doesn't have the same aesthetic cohesion of The Originals unified media presentation it doesn't use classical music either which was integral to conveying the historical scale of guina by tying it along with the visual design to deep parts of Humanity's past like all science fiction there is a limit to how long long Guin story will keep making sense as a vision of the future but much more captivating is the way it comments on the present you will almost definitely find yourself drawing parallels between characters and events in this series and real world politicians and events that you've witnessed within your lifetime even if like myself you were born after the original novels were already complete it is precisely because history repeats itself that Guin is able to predict things that will almost certainly remain true of Humanity's present forever when I say that I consider Ginga auu denet to be a 10 out of 10 animated series I want to clarify that it isn't because it meets any kind of standard for Perfection as I don't have one of those I think audiences will likely find certain writing and presentation decisions awkward when watching the show and maybe even disagree with its worldview in places or find some of its characterizations stilted on some level I think it's challenging to find any of the characters truly lovable considering that all of them are personally responsible for large amounts of death it isn't just the scale of the series that makes it fantastic actually compared to the complexity of one pie at this point guina is almost simplistic although it has a bigger weight on its shoulders narratively in that it has to preserve a sense of realism across the whole shaping of its Universe how well it accomplishes this may be a matter of debate but the worldliness of its approach with its deep grasp of history and extremely complex tactical and political scenarios is almost unmatched in storytelling Game of Thrones was never as compelling or complex in its political minations and ends up feeling like it has to sell itself on Grim Darkness like a half-baked berserk by the end in comparison to how Guin holds up all the way through the scale and complexity is one thing but the height of guin's consistency is almost without compare it might not be the prettiest anime ever made but it gets the job done where it counts and the art design is spectacularly tailored to the telling of the story most effectively it's incredibly difficult to imagine pulling off the same concept better than how this story did it or adapting that story to animation more fulfilling than Kitty film did I think there is at least as much to love about this series as there is to love about my other favorite long form anime stories like Hunter Hunter YuYu Haka show and Log Horizon as well as more densely packed favorites like Evangelion kill Lo kill Kon or shirobako in a way it's made it easier for me to draw a line in my list of favorite anime because the only things I can think of that I know I could spend even more time loving and dissecting are sangatsu noon or Gintama I don't know that I can come to love guina in the same personal way that I love some of those other shows but I can still confidently call it a favorite I cannot say much more about the show's themes and characters without getting into spoilers so this is as far as the recommendation part of this video goes if you've been sold on the show I recommend watching it in its entirety as soon as possible whether you Marathon 10 episodes a day for 11 days or take your time with two episodes a week for an entire year it's a journey that's worth your time and will almost certainly give you food for thought about the world you live in and present you with stories and characters that will inspire you lingering in your mind and keeping you coming back to the series for decades to come if nothing I've said about the series yet makes you think that you'd be interested in watching watching it then you probably won't be but if this seems like a show you'd enjoy on any level you almost certainly will spoilers can be difficult to avoid for this series as it almost seems intent on even spoiling itself episode titles next episode previews and even the narrator just telling us after certain conversations that these were the last ones the characters would ever have almost seemed to be making fun of us but even knowing a couple of major key spoilers going into the series I was still surprised consistently with how those events actually played out and impressed with how much the show kept me guessing down to the wire with red herrings and misx it is a very cleverly written show that knows how to hit every single time it needs to and that great storytelling Instinct keeps it compelling from start to finish this is the last time I will urge you to watch the entirety of Ginga Au densetsu before continuing with this video as I will be spoiling the series in its entirety from this point forward if you just want to know what the next episode of anime alphabet is about H is going to be for hibon a rme don't forget that you can support this series by subscribing to my substack blog golden witch. substack also post exclusive written articles and podcasts or by visiting patreon.com/crashcourse [Music] thinking that a firework or do I need to duck and hide always here the world is dark enough without you trying living life and suddenly it makes you die no time that's why we get to running Earth is rolling under it's a treadmill stunning when you notice you ain't moved you remain sto listlessly and floating I never fear the clap of Thunder when the flood pushes me under I'm a grills tell me it's all scary but I start to love thrill start to think it's boring if nobody gets killed but I only murder my old cells only those I just viably know don't deserve to live still I pull the plug and I deny the pill I spill the guts of those i t to CU my tongue Burrows into your skull just like a [Music] drill I remember last year the [ __ ] the internet let me do man that [ __ ] was yo yo yo yo putting more miles down than a taxi chilling with the homies riding around and front and back seats swapping DMS about Freedom with Y ma caffy find me on my Twitter but don't at me find me on my new inst but don't snap me busy was born a bastard no capping Blitz before the bar bu he throws back drinks bits of Applause preferred to slow clapping listen to already words on this old napkin what about me a third of the shit's acting rob it down in your verbs and this the black face hardly think it's absurd to miss my last name but well let's just say it gives me back pain Legacy and new lore is coming quick man cramp fairy on the mix to mastered the best moods from Western to Hip Hop from Best in to Red Roof I want a Smith and Weston in gold shoes I'm in a gold cape cuz I Paid Dues got my self-esteem up like a whole food you can't [ __ ] with v g no [Music] dude to me it didn't seem like Ginga Au densetsu Ever Wanted its audience to believe that Reinhard would stop short of seizing the entire Cosmos all of the iconography from the opening themes to the show's posters make it pretty clear that watching Reinhardt accomplish exactly what he says he's going to do is exactly the point of the show and the Intrigue is entirely in watching how the journey from points A to B plays out Gina is the story of a generational shift that causes the total upheaval of a long-standing social stasis which involves the largest loss of human life in all of the species history as well as the biggest requisition of power ever attained at the hands of an individual person Beyond just that it is a chess game or Imagining the inevitability of Humanity's biggest war it is most particularly the story of the foundation of Humanity's greatest Empire the writing on the wall that the alliance is going to lose horribly to the Empire is written right from the start of the show Yang's existence only barely gives the alliance enough Edge not to get instantly overtaken by reinhardt's determination and it's immediately obvious that the alliance just doesn't have the power structure to deal with Reinhard after he seizes control of the Empire at the end of the first season the only way that Yang could have competed with Reinhardt directly would have been to copy his autocratic tactics and even if only briefly acted as the supreme commander of mankind until its unification to do this would be to disobey the fundamental principles guiding Yang's behavior and so of course he never seizes the opportunity even after the collapse of the alliance if he was ever going to just succumb and work for Reinhard he probably would have done so by defecting right at the beginning of the story to the team that he predicted was going to win the entire time instead Yang's existence is representative of the ideological heart which will keep Humanity from ever totally accepting even the most effective autocratic rule except by force over the course of the first season we witnessed the total upending of power structures governing both superpowers as their conflict escalates Reinhard Roots out the malifa is in his own Society by process of elimination until he rises to a lucky power vacuum and inspires the largest Civil War in human history when other factions of nobility foolishly attempt to thwart his Reign to continue the lives they're used to the alliance meanwhile is upended by its own idiocy it's Stitch efforts to keep the war politically popular backfiring and reinhard's manipulations easily sparking a rebellion amid their ranks led by Frederica green Hill's Father which he does just for the sake of keeping the alliance busy while he handles his own Civil War how Reinhardt ends his Civil War and his power sweep afterwards ends up being the defining show of his character that puts him on the tragic course to the end of the universe when his opponent Prince Brown schweig decides to Nuke a planet under his own control completely off the map for disobeying him Reinhardt has the opportunity to stop him however over Stein proposes that they allow the attack to happen as it will turn the rest of the planets against Brown schweig and make it easier to finish him off Reinhardt is disgusted at the thought and knows in his heart that if kir I had been there to help him think about it he would have begun from the position of dismissing that thought outright and looking for the best alternative solution instead Reinhardt decides to sleep on it based on obstein statement that the attack is to take place in 6 hours however when he wakes up 4 hours later the attack has already occurred overin claims that he sent a fleet to intercept the attack anyways which didn't make it into time but he was able to get a camera drone there in time to capture footage of the attack and broadcast it to the Empire so Reinhardt concludes that oberstein must have lied to him about when the attack was going to happen nonetheless he considers this only to have been possible because of his indecision on resolving the matter and blames himself when kir I approaches Reinhardt about his decision Reinhardt does not attempt to apologize for his responsibility in the matter but instead defends the reasoning by which it happened and reminds Kiri of his place as reinhard's underling ultimately fracturing their friendship upon which Reinhard is always relied for strength it isn't long after this that kiris is killed protecting Reinhard from an assassination attempt and the sense that Reinhardt is never going to really be the same is immediately palpable to anyone in this moment his emotional defeat is as cemented in place as his inevitable victory over the universe no matter how far he goes in realizing his ambition for the sake of the ideals it was founded on he will never be able to know happiness in this universe which he conquers without his best friend to share it with even his sister who has now lost the man she secretly reciprocated love for to her brother's ambition decides that she can no longer live under her brother's direct supervision and Reinhard resolves not to see her at all until he has seized the Universe I think it's definitely true that history became worse than it would have been after the death of Kiri although it also causes Reinhard to become more hastily rounded as a person one of my favorite parts of reinhardt's character is how he's so resistant to disagreeable information that he will refuse to look at people when they say things he doesn't want to hear this Behavior holds up over the whole series but we will never see him so willing to suffer someone's words as he had been with Kiri even when he eventually finds love with mariand dorf it is after having asked her in a fury why she is allowed to have brought him as much news that he didn't want to hear as she has by that point in the series Reinhardt at once becomes darker and more ruthless in his tactics without kir ice but also softer and more protective towards the people around him with more and more value put into his other subordinates just as oberstein always felt there should have been with Reinhardt and emotional shambles and the FPA reeling from its own idiocy as it just barely keeps Empire Invasion at Bay at isolone Fortress it is time for Rubin to be doing the winning for a while and whenever rubinsky is winning is when guina is at its most necessarily frustrating watching Yang whom the FPA is practically solely reliant on for its continued existence at this point kidnapped and forced to undergo days of idiotic hearings thanks to rinsky's manipulations leaves us feeling little need for the FPA to go on existing as it is and turns all of Yang's direct backers pretty firmly out of love with their government all of this only for the hearings to be put to a stop and yang begged back into his position as soon as Reinhardt takes control of the game Again by setting off one of the show's most satisfying battles between a pair of planet-sized fortresses for the rest of the second season which I will call the ending of the Great War Arc we are practically just watching the death spiral of the free planets Alliance in excruciating detail there is no real hope for victory on the part of the FP at best they might hope to broker some kind of peace and yang wendley is sure that if kir Kei were still alive then that's exactly what they would be attempting but with job trun having taken control of the government thanks to opposing the military operation that he knew the FPA was going to lose earlier there is little chance of the fbaa making any kind of peaceful decisions and soon enough they have teamed up with the remnants of nobility that kidnapped the 7-year-old Kaiser and name only that Reinhard technically rules under to show reinhard's supposedly lacking moral character all of which is only happening because rubinsky is trying to create an excuse for the Galactic Empire to put an end to the alliance once and for all and allow fee to continue its existence as the financial operations base of the Empire a bulk of this Arc is dedicated to showcasing the ironic contrast of History's bestr run autocracy versus its worst-run Republican democracy Reinhardt is so capable of popular reform and has so much trust from his constituency that the population is legitimately happy to be under his rule but to be satisfied with allowing the reign of any autocratic power is unacceptable to the idealists of democracies such as Yang and the alliance's oldest trusted Admiral buok no matter how great a ruler Reinhardt himself may be the systems he governs by will still lead to problems as soon as he isn't in charge Yang's commitment to enacting the will of democracy is such that he even accepts how the results are often foolish better to have been hoist by the foolishness of a majority than by the will of an individual I suppose personally I'm inclined to disagree with Yang that the FPA is even truly Democratic to begin with considering how much the political class is capable of Exterminating competition and manipulating the populace it seems more fair to consider them an autocratic government with a step or two removed I think Julian's perspective later on that democracy will eventually make sense again after reinhard's era is over ends up being a more responsible mentality than dying on the hill of absolute loyalty to democracy as Yang and ends up doing I don't want to describe all of the complications and how the power struggle between fezen the FPA and the Empire play out but I do want to summarize a few of my favorite moments along the way there guina is cran with such a huge number of characters so that none of them can be tasked to have done an unreasonable amount of awesome things Rank and reputation do a lot to signify us of the greatness of certain characters but there are only so many things that anyone could accomplish of true impressiveness in the course of the show itself and no one comes even close to achieving as much of that as Yang Wen Lee including Reinhardt himself in terms of of impressive tactical Maneuvers on the battlefield nevertheless there are characters like shmop who are awesome to watch in action and Geniuses like Oscar Von ruthal who come close to conquering Yang's isolone Fortress only to be fended off in a knife fight against sheno this was one of my favorite action scenes in the show because it was the first time that two proven badasses with a lot of buildup behind them came into a one-on-one clash and I was tense with excitement over the thought that either of them was satisfyingly awesome to be the person that killed the other but I was also relieved not only that both combatants survived this encounter but that they would continue to be fleshed out so heavily over the course of the show one of the things I find most genius about guina is how it deliberately sets up situations that are meant to create mixed feelings in the viewer by seeming more satisfyingly historical than satisfyingly dramatic during the one clash between Reinhardt and yang at full power Yang has reinhard's life within his hands and narrowly misses the chance to likely end the Galactic Empire then and there because of the last minute arrival of other Admirals thanks to the advice of mariendorf leading them ahead Reinhardt lives in the shadow of having spiritual lost to Yang and never truly gotten the chance for revenge for the rest of the series and the way that Yang eventually dies couldn't have even made sense as anything other than a way to blueball Reinhard even worse but I think it all shakes out as fair in the grand scheme of what this conflict really always was if the free planets Alliance had ever been a well-organized government that listened to Yang the way that the Empire listens to Reinhard then he probably could have won the war a years ago Yang would have to seize autocratic decision-making to make this happen as Reinhardt did and his unwillingness to have done that is what allowed the Empire to ever stand a chance against him in the first place Yang was never going to lose the Tactical battle to Reinhard it was always an ideological battle he was fighting against himself that guided his actions reinhardt's greatest skill was always the acquisition of Power by way of talent which he managed by rewarding only loyalty and Merit and harshly penalizing faults in either Yang was always stuck with whatever he could get while Reinhard was always taking whatever he wanted and what he wanted the most was anyone that could come close to doing the exact same thing that he was doing and who only submitted to him because he was clearly the best person to lead the operation Beyond Yang buck and Attenborough as well as Merk hats for the period of time when he's an admiral in Yang's Fleet all of whom could be considered among the ranks of the best Admirals alongside the most heralded of reinhardt's command there is no one else in the fbaa that compares to the next 10 or 15 of reinhard's best guys even if she can't truly replace kir I being as she never ends up commanding troops herself mariand dorf reaches a point of understanding and effect on Reinhard that she can start to to act as the brighter part of his conscience and to fill in the gaps of his reasoning as kiris once did as much as he may hate to hear disagreement Reinhard loves to fill his world with people that disagree with him or even go behind his back to ensure that his will is protected whereas the people around yangwen Lee are desperately trying to soak up as much of his wisdom as possible so that they can step into helpful roles themselves the people around Reinhardt are pushing him to even greater Heights by actively trying to outwit him and improve his decision making it is not really a surprise then that even when he loses the close-range Tactical space battle to Yang he ultimately wins the broader meta battle by way of the protection he has all the way across the vastness of space in this way I think reinhardt's Victory is only as unfair as the fact that he and yang were never really playing the same game in the first place season 3 which I will call the unification of the universe Arc is the longest of the series and even more saturated in the tone of inevitability than the last two at this point Reinhardt practically has seized the universe it's only a matter of ironing out exactly what that looks like for everyone that's still around living inside of it the FPA doesn't want to stop existing so they agree to continue operation under the Empire's rule which it seems like the Empire mostly allows so that they don't have to immediately set up a new governing body Yang is content to [ __ ] off and retire now that the Alliance military shouldn't have a purpose so he marries Frederica and settles down for a while before inevitably becoming the target of everyone in the universe's desires as one of the few people effective at getting anything done therein the more he doesn't want to do what anyone else wants him to do the more they see fit to just start forcing him into position until he's got no no choice but to either fight off basically everyone and start his own Society or let himself get killed in the end he kind of does both but it's a long tease even if you aren't spoiled for the fact of Yang's death like I was you're likely to sense it coming from much earlier in the story just by the nature of its conflict and guina takes advantage of that to keep planting red herrings and twists in between Yang's marriage at the start of the season and his death towards its End by this point in the story enough of the people in the universe are already dead that we get more time to hone in on the main characters and really start fleshing them out through more interactions Julian is the main operative for this to occur on the Alliance side as the older men on his team are always looking to pour their influence into the promising young man and in soaking in all their personalities through the lens of his loyalty to Yang's ideals he starts to become his own interesting thinker and leader that will obviously be tasked to take Yang's Place Oscar Von royan thals bizarre and somewhat troubling relationship with the woman who he trapped in his house after she tried to kill him makes for a fascinating background narrative and how it showcases his eccentricity and peculiar relationship towards women he insists throughout her pregnancy that he will make sure the child is aborted but never does at every turn in his journey he finds himself pondering the fact that no one would be better suited to turn on Reinhard at any moment than himself even though he always finds himself convinced that he probably wouldn't do such a thing obstein doesn't change much over the course of the show but it's interesting to see the way that other Admirals grow in contempt for him over time suspecting his pulling the strings that led to the death of kiris whether obstein really did even think that getting kir killed was a good idea or not the most astute observation someone makes about him is that he seems willing to take on all of the most hatable roles and positions as though he's preventing anyone else from having to do the same considering his introduction to Reinhardt oberstein seems to see himself as someone only granted the opportunity to even exist by having been born in a more liberal era and therefore Lucky in every moment that he gets to keep surviving to him being despised is a step up from the natural genetic Destiny considered for someone like him and therefore he will take on the responsibility of being the most hated person in the Empire so that Reinhard can be the most loved I don't think he truly VI us himself as belonging to a lower position than Reinhardt but rather as the other side of that great Powers coin in this way I think that for all of his CD tactics obstein truly wants what is best for Reinhard more than anyone and probably didn't actually intend for kir to be killed in such a way or even for royan Thal to be put in the position that he is during the final season I think it's more fair to say that obstein existence contributed to the ability for these things to happen even if they weren't his exact intent and that it's understandable to Heap some responsibility for those things onto him for the same reason that it's okay to Heap responsibil for the things which he did intend to let happen like the westerland incident onto Reinhard the series of battles leading up to Yang's death are epic and awesome as we truly see the depth of the isone corridor's Tactical usefulness but are also tinged as always with knowing that Yang is only giving Reinhard what he would describe as a less complete Victory I kept thinking from the second season on that the Empire surely has enough raw military force that if they just kept sending wave after wave of them at the alliance they would eventually win it would just leave them with such a dwindled military and reduced population that it wouldn't be be worth doing still no matter how costly Yang can make it to take him out it's pretty clear within a few episodes of this season that the universe will stop at nothing to kill this man because the concept of his existence is both too precious and too dangerous to continue it's not even fair to say that Yang had to die because of his ideals because as soon as he's gone Reinhardt allows the people of isone to go on existing and trying to plan their own independent government because he just doesn't care anymore Yang's existence as the greatest tactical genius in the Galaxy meant that anyone with intent on ruling the Galaxy needed him either on their side or dead and yang didn't really want to be on anyone's side there's a great scene in the first season in which Frederica and Julian discuss her first meeting with Yang when he organized the evacuation of millions of citizens and first earned his reputation as a hero julan wonders if Yang's life would have been easier if he hadn't LED that cause in the first place and developed that reputation which freder refutes by pointing out that he most likely would have been a prisoner of war instead everything in the setting really follows from this principle to some degree no one necessarily wanted to be fighting in this war so much as that they found the M themselves involved in it because of the totality of its effect on society it's hard to say what Yang would have ended up doing if he never joined the military because we don't learn much in the show about what life is like for Citizens on either side of the conflict but the only reason he did so was because he didn't have any other opportunities and wanted the chance to study history every step of the way everyone in this conflict is stepping into the shoes that fit them and in Yang's case those just happen to be massive shoes that he didn't want to wear Yang was never really in a fair fight against anyone because of the misfortune of his birth but he also ultimately went down for the preservation of his ideals I do find him kind of selfish in that he drags his entire crew into this losing battle over ideals which many of them feel much less strongly about and would rather encourage him to try taking control and putting up more of a fight even though they end up making the decision to obey their loyalty to him anyways I think the story lets everyone else and even Yang Soul off easy by only killing him and then letting his ideals potentially live on with the people that he inspired or maybe it's fair to say that his ideals were so inspiring and how they led him to Greatness even in the eyes of his enemies that they couldn't truly bring themselves to let those ideals out either way the death of Yang cast an enormous Shadow over the whole rest of the story and once more cements Reinhardt into the pit of misery that one of the people who made his living worthwhile has been erased again gin's final Arc is the only one in which true dramatic surprises occur and feels less inevitable than what came before I think its desire to give strong dramatic closure to all of its most interesting characters is a noble one and it preserves a sense of tragic historicity in how those events are portrayed even if I also get the feeling that Tanaka Yoshi kisan was trying to tie as big of a bow on the series as he could so that it could have a sense of real closure as much as I would enjoy a sequel following Felix mitm and Alexander Sig freed Von lram into adulthood in a world where in Ulen has become a more legendary figure than Yang ever was it's hard to imagine accomplishing this without treading too much of the same ground that the first series already did I do find the ending of the series to have been immensely satisfying even if I don't think all of what happens in the final Arc felt as necessary to the story's foundational communication as what had come before much of the drama in the final Arc is created by the church of Tera which goes to show just how much easier it is to create destruction and Chaos than to be the genius that can bring the whole universe together the insane cultists willing to make life difficult for anyone they're told to by their nonsense spouting leaders make a convenient political tool for both sides at various points and so it might be that everyone deserved to be undone by them that was bastardly as the cult truly is much of what they instigate throughout this Arc is mostly done to frustrate the viewer but also create the context for a bunch of characters to make badass final stands that we are likely to always remember them for even if they never should have been in those positions but then none of what happened in this show really should have happened I suppose if royan Thal was always faded to die then it was for the same reason as Yang Wen Lee there just can't be this many people with this much power running around inside the universe even Oscar himself realized this over and over again almost like he's accidentally activating the law of attraction to pull a reason for his Rebellion into his life he is so easily set up that it's hard to imagine he could have made it too long without someone trying to do it and since he's a completely insane person he just kind of runs with it to the end for us this means getting to see one of the wildest tactical Space Battles in involving some of the greatest tacticians performing at their heights as well as one of the coolest dragged out deaths in anime history and yet all of it is bitterly frustrating to have to watch the happen to one of the show's best characters at the behest of its most hatable at the very least Oscar uses his impending death to commit an act of absolute necessary good in murdering job trun I think it tells us a lot about the feelings of G as a story overall that trun is one of the only characters whose head we never really get allowed in sight of we don't hear his thoughts and his expression is perpetually inscrutable it's almost as if Tanaka Yoshi kisan was saying that he knows this kind kind of hyper politician exists but he doesn't understand how someone can think like them enough to even write about it everyone in the show hates TR NE from the beginning except for himself and we eventually learn that the feelings are mutual when he finally monologues to royan Thal he reveals such an AC of contempt for everyone that isn't himself that it disgusts Roy andal to the point of murdering him on the spot just to ensure that his rot cannot infest the new Reich Roy and Tal's Rebellion doesn't feel necessary strictly speaking from a narrative standpoint but I wouldn't be surprised if tanakasan had planned for him to have his fight against his best friend m and then to leave him to care for his newborn son from as far back as when he first introduced the woman that would birth his child and the fact that M Meyer's happeny marriage hadn't produced any Offspring it is such a dramatically satisfying Arc that even though it can't possibly be as good in the sense of fulfilling a sort of Storytelling necessity in the world like how the first three seasons did it is still one of the most memorable and emotionally affecting parts of the whole show just because of how much tanakasan understands how to give fittingly characteristic endings to his character's lives as is pointed out a few times by survivors likewise I still haven't completely understood how it was necessary for julen to end up fighting against the empire at the end and it seems almost Preposterous that ison's forces weren't completely wiped out except that the story is anticipating its own trajectory towards ending with the passing of mercats and Shen cop one can't help but think that these men like Reinhard just couldn't have really existed in an era that wasn't defined by Warfare and were bound to find a place to die before this whole Affair was over still the feeling that the show is just giving a last round of characters a chance to die in the final stretch of episodes was sitting with me as I watched Julian's team getting picked off one by one on his way to confronting the Kaiser only for Reinhard to be an audience to Julian's peace talks that I feel like he probably would have been willing to hear out in another non-violent context regardless it is the impending death of Reinhardt which cast the biggest Shadow over the show's final episodes leading into one of the finest ending episodes of a TV show I have ever seen every stage of reinhard's lengthy and strangely Serene death is gripping and there is this palpable sense that this man who existed for no purpose but to do what he has already accomplished simply perished by way of lacking to need to exist anymore his inability to raise his son hardly even seems tragic when we consider that his only relationship to his own parents had ever been the hatred of his father and that he never really knew how to live any kind of Lifestyle beyond the battlefield maybe his child won't take after him after all and will be just the ruler that a time of Peace needs or maybe he'll be assassinated before his first birthday we will never know that Reinhardt is in the middle of dying when oberstein tricks the last of the earth cult into coming to his house so that everyone there can make a go of finally wiping them out is the ultimate obstein moment and it wouldn't be right if a battle wasn't happening just outside of the room that Reinhard was dying in it also wouldn't be right if the surprising satisfaction of getting to watch Julien gun down the leader of the Terra cult in the name of Vengeance for Yang wasn't immediately followed by the sorrowful realization of oberin's mortal wounding my favorite heartfelt moment in the entire series is when marand dorf tells Reinhard that obstein is too tied up to come see him and Reinhard remarks how that man does always have a reason to be somewhere it's strangely adorable to think that Reinhard went to death believing that at least mitter Meer and oberstein were still around to protect his legacy and that he went out thinking fondly of oberstein without ever knowing that he died first the softer Reinhardt that we see at the end of his life couldn't have existed in this world for long but I found him to be a pleasure to watch and we can really feel the sense of how Reinhardt while he may have always chosen to be who he was so that he could have had the effect that he did never truly wanted to be that guy and could have been a much gentler and Kinder Soul if he didn't have to fill the role that he did before I am done speaking about this series for now I have to give thanks to the former anime bloggers ghost lightning and tharus whose writing on the show from over a decade ago first introduced me to it and prepared me for how to think about it and which I just Revisited and enjoyed again finally knowing exactly what they were talking about I also have to thank Jay for the most complete effort in describing what happens in every episode which I could refer back to for help in finishing this video any of them would agree with me that there is way way way more to be said about guina than any of us have managed or than I've seen in discussions online and that's kind of a shame it's only because the show is so big and so daunting that not only is there little discussion of it in the first place but even those of us who have seen it all feel like we have only scratched the surface of getting all we can out of it on just one viewing guin's straight faced and historicity give it a special feeling as an erative experience and especially as an animated series I can't think of another story that feels as well considered or as understanding of human nature and history even if it is maybe somewhat standoffish on the emotional level I can't think of another anime I would describe as being more mature than this one even if there might be shows that have more mature understandings of certain subjects or experiences and communicate more precisely there is a stilted that can't help but come from a straight-faced animated epic political space drama but it is less so even than the stilted cheesiness of Star Trek or Mass Effect or anything else that tries to be serious about thinking through a future for Humanity and it is certainly more Bleak in its predictions than those great as its characters are and impressive as it is to witness the breadth of the story's ambition I really do think that the palpable feeling of realness is what makes the series most unique and noteworthy and compels so many to consider it as one of the greatest shows of all time it just nails that combination of classy worldly storytelling and brutally heart killing drama in a way that even the best HBO shows only pretend to on their way to middling conclusions I mentioned before that there are three films and more than 50 episodes of Side Stories for Ginga Au Den setu though most of it seems pretty fanservicey and unnecessary from what I've read as compared to the original story nonetheless I will make another video covering all of that content as soon as this video reaches 50,000 views and provided this video doesn't completely bomb I'd love to keep revisiting guina in the future even though it took me more than a decade from when I first checked out an episode of the series to when I finished it I feel as though my relationship to this anime has only just begun and like I haven't been able to find yet the surely unfathomable number of words I could spill about it there is so much packed in here that it deserves a surgical dissection and that isn't easy to perform on such a massive body nevertheless I think this show can still be more interesting to talk about today or tomorrow than most of what will newly be released in that time if you like this video I implore you to subscribe to this channel yig Studio to watch the rest of the anime alphabet series and to support me on substack or patreon using the links below as well as to subscribe to My Music Channel branches of yig thanks again for watching and always remember that all of the lights in the Sky are Stars I've been Trixie the golden witch telling you to never forget anime forever